find my words in riverstones
Yangtze mementoes
set to the music of opaque
contrapuntal tides, injured
flows, exhausted clanks
the noise of modern life.
Find me in the bedrock
where three rivers join.
Pick me up: my exterior
burnished to shine by millennium
of river rush concretized into solid joy.
Summon my sisters of the coves
some gorged on, some exempt
from my immense hungers.
How I quicken with hope
knowing they endure
—because how can anyone go on alone?
Let me tell you a story.
Once rocks were just rocks
and we were supple creatures
these deeps our dreamland
century after century, unaware
of the paradoxes of the why or how
of who we were or the puzzle of
the obscure world above
but our worlds darkened and
we got clearer—quickly
evil genii cast spells of greed
causing (as they say)
the endemic decline of fishes taxa.
But listen dear Chinese sturgeon, my blue-whiskered friend—
O shadows of the upper world
we’re your lost songs
words forgotten, recalled
by melody alone. Reject
the exed-out maze
of your quaked soul
recover the superb
channel to the sea
follow your way back
by the path we’ve paved.
